Drivers don’t typically have to watch for air traffic, but one man in Oklahoma City found himself swerving around a low-flying military aircraft on October 23. Most people wouldn’t have believed it if his Tesla hadn’t captured the near-miss on its dash cam, reports 40/29 News, and some still don’t, thanks to the proliferation of AI slop. Matthew Topchian had to react quickly to avoid being hit as the airplane crossed the road at an altitude of just a few feet before swerving back to the right to avoid an oncoming Ford Transit. While Teslas and their drivers do have a reputation for crashing, Topchian was on the ball and avoided a crash of his own.
NewsRadio 105.5 WERC reports that an Oklahoma National Guard OA-1K Skyraider II had been flying a training mission out of Will Rogers Air National Guard Base. It suffered an engine failure, leading the two pilots to look for as safe a place as possible to land. After nearly striking Topchian’s Tesla, the Skyraider II crashed into power lines, starting a brush fire, at the intersection of Southeast 119th Street and Sooner Road, taking a road sign from the intersection with it as it crashed into a field.
“As soon as we arrived on scene, it was refreshing to see the two pilots on board tell us that everybody was okay,” Oklahoma City Fire Department spokesman Scott Douglas told KOCO News 5. The Air Force pilot and civilian contractor both walked away from the crash unharmed. The cause of the engine failure is still under investigation.
Too close for comfort
Matthew Topchian’s dash cam video is impressive to watch. He has almost no time to identify and react to the aircraft as he comes around a curve and is faced with the Skyraider II coming almost right at him. While I would expect Full Self-Driving to stop for a school bus, I would never expect it to anticipate this out-of-the-blue situation. That’s why it’s important for drivers using any ADAS system, not just Tesla’s, to keep an eye on the road and be ready to react to the unexpected.
One question that’s likely to pop up in the comments is why the airplane crossed the road and crashed rather than landing on the roadway itself. While the crash investigation is ongoing, I suspect the plane was already too low to make the final turn to fly down the road before landing. This may also be why the Cessna that crashed at Lime Rock Park put it down in a grassy infield area instead of the long front straightaway. The pilot had likely already committed to the open field as the safest place to attempt a landing, and flew straight and level toward it despite cars coming from both directions. While a crash is never a good outcome, this seems to have been the least bad outcome, with no harm to the pilots or people on the ground.
